Do remember that Astartes can also eat people's brains to learn basically everything that they know.
Warhammer 40K How quickly would modern Earth capitulate to two full Space Marine Chapters?
- Thread starter Tyzuris
- Start date
Another factor, I think, would be how the Astartes would react to seeing what is basically Holy Terra in such a state.
Would they see a mockery, a copy, and bomb the shit out of it? Or would they see Modern Earth, Holy Terra in its past state, as basically an unblemished (compared to the shit-factory that it became in 30k+) shrine? The potential of it?
A clear warp/immaterium. Pretty much an empty solar system. No chaos cultists or contamination -- just regular old human assholishness that's not bad compared to any normal Hive World out there.
Would they see a mockery, a copy, and bomb the shit out of it? Or would they see Modern Earth, Holy Terra in its past state, as basically an unblemished (compared to the shit-factory that it became in 30k+) shrine? The potential of it?
A clear warp/immaterium. Pretty much an empty solar system. No chaos cultists or contamination -- just regular old human assholishness that's not bad compared to any normal Hive World out there.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
There'd be no contest and no conflict. We'd have little way to resist a large fleet like that in orbit, and as our planet is absent of Chaos taint the Astartes won't be very trigger happy. Indeed, after the submissions are given, most of our governments would be left in place (overseen by a planetary governor, of course) and we'd be enthusiastically welcomed into the wider Imperium.
Seriously. Earth is a resource rich garden world, with a society who's circuitry and computer technology may well be of interest to the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Seriously. Earth is a resource rich garden world, with a society who's circuitry and computer technology may well be of interest to the Adeptus Mechanicus.
Buba
A total creep
That's a very bold and courageous statement!
Any Democrat-majority state, really.NYC, June 2nd, 2023.
"Why can't women become Space Marine--"
Insert bolter round through skull here.
"Any more questions?"
(Yes, to any Lefty out there, this is tongue-in-cheek. To quote Bart Simpson: "Don't have a cow, man").
Any Democrat-majority state, really.
"Why can't women become Space Marine--"
Insert bolter round through skull here.
"Any more questions?"
(Yes, to any Lefty out there, this is tongue-in-cheek. To quote Bart Simpson: "Don't have a cow, man").
Unfortunatelly,they later kill all christians.Muslims,hindu , buddhists and jews,too - but i do not care about them.
This assumes presumably that the Space Marines will actually compel Earth to defeat.
I find this issue in doubt at best, because it's quite clear that the Emperor himself is thusly currently residing on Earth, being a perpetual. And one of the distinct abilities ascribed to the Emperor is that he is a powerful psychic. Furthermore it is known that the pre-eminent Perpetual Geneticist Erda defined perpetuals as 'Homo Superior.'
Therefore, through inference its quite clear what form the Emperor has taken during this time period.
Yes that is correct. He was the founder of the X-Men.
Now I know what you are saying, how is an older balding White guy in a fancy yellow hoverchair somehow the Emperor? Where are those flowing black locks? Why isn't he fourteen feet tall? Blah Blah Blah. It's quite obvious that he can change his form, this is known. The balding is clearly a ploy or tactic to completely defray suspicion. As for the alleged infirmity, canonically it occurred when he confronted Lucifier, a supposed xenos with the powers of telepathy and ionic manipulation who was later banished to a 'nameless dimension' as ascribed in the Marvel Comics Universe. It's quite clear this nameless dimension is 'The Warp.'
Being crippled by such a formidable foe undoubtedly required the Emperor to confront his limitations and thus he subtly pursued a precursor to his later project, by recruiting other 'Homo Superiors' as Mutants were dubbed by him, into forming them into an elite special operations force that also engaged in paramilitary training of other mutants, as well as establishing links between Human-Mutant communities to foment jolly cooperation. He was even betrayed by one of his greatest students and confidants, one known as Erik Lensheer or 'Magneto.' No doubt the Emperor X learned from his mistakes and wouldn't be betrayed again. But regardless the thrust of the point is this...
Emperor X will immediately recognize the arrival of these Space Marines and it will only take a cursory moment for him to deduce their origins from either a future... or future alternate reality as actually being part of an organization founded by himself. I fully expect Emperor X would explore options of peaceful reconciliation, but if that proves impossible, he undoubtedly has plans in place. For example, the leader of Earth's space based, anti-xenos forces is a mutant known as Abigail Brand, who is actually the spawn of a xenos-mutant coupling and thus total heresy (unless your Roberte Guilliman). Emperor X in fact already has a program in place. But you would've missed it since it's actually quite subtle.
In 1999 a council of nations independent of any other international government body founded a secret organization called the Extraterrestrial Combat Unit or X-Com. Ostensibly developed as an UFO Watchdog and Investigatory body, their underhanded dealings resulting in the proliferation of knowledge of xenobiology and xenotechnology, as well as the proliferation of laser and plasma weapons, advances in aerospace, anti-matter power generation and most notably of all, gene mods and mechancial troops or MECs and the advancement of psionic screening, training, proliferation and advancement. The fact that Emperor X was behind this project of creating psionically gifted gene melded Cyborg troopers. Does that sound like something familiar?
The conclusion of the campaign resulted in the seizure of a Martian complex known as Cydonia where the Xenos Alliance had created a technological and industrial base from which they conducted their operations against Earth. The why of this is immaterial at the moment, though perhaps it will become important in subsequent millenia. What is known is that this was the beginning of the basis of Mars becoming a potent technological and industrial powerhouse as is known in later history. What is also almost certain is that the Imperium Space Marines likely have no idea of the hidden Cydonia Complex as they believe erroneously that Mars was colonized by industrial cartels in later centuries who fomented the Second World War between Earth and Mars.
This in turn implies that the Space Marines may find that their conquest and subjugation of Earth could be easy, but the Emperor X will simply bide his time away marshalling his resources in this hidden Cydonia complex, and considerable resources he will have. The rapid nature of research, production and deployment from hidden bases that was established by the X-Com Project, done in absolute secrecy, when combined with his resources that can be redeployed from Earth, means that Emperor X may not be able to prevent the short term capitulation of Earth, but that this will simply be the first step in a multilevel plan for Emperor X to commit to what will undoubtedly be a masterful counterstroke, likely foisted upon the Space Marines headquarter vessels themselves, if he is unable to reach a more diplomatic and conciliatory solution with a strike force capable of such tactical potency that the Space Marines will be legitimately surprised to confront.
I knew this premise sounded familiar. My answer there hasn't changed, space marines likely cannot force capitulation without resorting to means that leave the earth bombed into uselessness.
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
The Adeptus Astartes would have total orbital supremacy here. Should Earth prove foolish enough to resist, they can carry out decapitation strikes at will until we submit.
Which will be "never". Strategic bombing has never successful broken the will of a country and forced them to surrender (it worked once, in a dictatorship where they only needed to crack one guy, and even then it was close).
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
...it has.
On numerous occasions. Iraq imploded because of it, and North Vietnam came crawling to the negotiating table when America stepped up its bombing campaign.
Completely flattening the enemy's ability to resist is one hell of an incentive for them to surrender. Especially given that the Imperium's terms would be reasonable.
I'll also point to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Iraq collapsed when we rolled tanks into Bagdad, the air war helped achieve that but Sadam didn't surrender until we sent ground forces in to crush him, nor did that air power succeed in preventing further, constant resistance from the local population.
I don't know much about nam, but just skimming the wiki and a few other sources "we bombed them into surrendering" is definitely wrong, and "we bombed them into negotiating" is a massive oversimplification.
That would be the one time it worked, because one guy cracked, but the populace was still behind fighting the war, and the military nearly pulled a coup to keep the fight going.
I would also note that the nature of the incoming regime has a fair bit of influence over how hard people fight back. The Imperium is, at its nicest, still basically Stalinist Russia, if Stalin was an undying corpse you had to pray to. The almost universally supported western response to the much, much nicer post Stalin USSR was still "we'd rather bomb humanity back to the stone age, if the alternative is letting you run our lives"*. There are more than enough elements of the Imperium to inspire permanent resistance and refusal to bow to imperial authority, regardless of the government response or how futile such a fight would be.
*the one thing detering us from taking this route might be the fact that the canonical space marine response to a stated preference for living in a radioactive stone age wasteland vs Imperium rule is "AWESOME, we love ruling over radioactive stone age wastelands! Do you want us to release the aggressive, heavily mutated animals that would pit you in a constant battle for survival, or do you have that covered?
Also, how attached are you to having your kids stay as your kids vs letting them be abducted so they can be subjected to a process that will kill or maim them like 90 times out of a hundred, with a 1 in one hundred chance of later facing a 100% certainty of a brutal death at the hands of some alien monster.....just, uh, hypothetically speaking?"
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Decapitation strikes are just as likely to create more problems than they tend to solve and there's a reason why they aren't the first option in most conflicts. The heads of state are the people you are negotiating with. If you kill them, it can cause an internal split within your adversary that makes any sort of capitulation all the more difficult. Then you either wait until a new leader is selected or you're stuck with two warring factions. And if the new leader(s) don't capitulate, do you just kill them too?
The Astartes's goal is to conquer Earth. It does the Astartes no good if all they end up doing is destroying the very thing they want. The Astartes are better off invading Iran, securing a kingdom of their own, then expanding outwards. By working generation after generation, they'll net more of what they want, without risking the entire prize. Even if they only expand themselves to the size of the Ottoman Empire, they would have increased their numbers by hundreds of millions, if not possibly a billion.
The Astartes could also always hold out hope that the Imperium will eventually come back for them, giving them the numbers and resources to conquer the planet entirely in the future.
That's incredibly unlikely for three reasons.
1) First, just looking at rough numbers, you're talking about slaughtering an excess of 5.8 billion people on a planet with just under 8 billion. A complete and utter waste.
2) Religious variation within the Imperium is actually probably the same or greater what you would see between the Imperium and Earth. There are probably a series of core beliefs that humans are required to believe in, centering upon the Emperor and religious laws, but there is probably a great deal of variation. Not only would you have geographical differences on a planet, but you would have differences from planet to planet and system to system.
3) The Imperium probably engages in a great deal of religious syncretism. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hindu, and Buddhism all have a sort of savior figure within their faiths. Not surprising as in reality, the Imperium is sort of a spin-off of the Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. The Emperor would obviously be caste as a Christ figure to the Abrahamic faiths, while he'd be portrayed more as a Buddha figure to the Asians.
The Astartes would be able to easily make that argument to the Islamic world, which is in search of a hard win right now. The Asian countries would probably just accept the Imperium's position out of pragmatism. The only resistance you might find would be among the Western countries, but even that argument might be made. Religion is one of the strongest means of social identity.
The Astartes would very much desire the Catholic Church institution as a way of maintaining control in Europe and the Americas.
That's a lot more sensible than murdering 6 billion potential loyal subjects and wasting their economic potential.
Space Marines should either take Switzerland, Iceland, or Tibet.
What's the sitch?
Well-known member
Prolly kill us anyway due to some claim of heresy or a demon plot about how this couldn't be terra.
Pretty sure they couldn't take over the internet, if the fanfic cross overs have taught me anything they don't really even know how their equipment/machinery largely works and are living in a sort of idiocracy world in that regards, like it breaks down and they have no idea how to repair it, they can "turn it on" and "off" but even to do that they go around praying to the emperor.
Depending where we are located, we would either get consumed by the forces of chaos for our information or get turned into some sort of blacksite by the imperium if we aren't purged from orbit by the marines.
Pretty sure they couldn't take over the internet, if the fanfic cross overs have taught me anything they don't really even know how their equipment/machinery largely works and are living in a sort of idiocracy world in that regards, like it breaks down and they have no idea how to repair it, they can "turn it on" and "off" but even to do that they go around praying to the emperor.
Depending where we are located, we would either get consumed by the forces of chaos for our information or get turned into some sort of blacksite by the imperium if we aren't purged from orbit by the marines.
Not likely. There's been a number of planets conquered by the imperium that were called "Terra", many of which the locals insisted was in fact the real Terra, having forgotten their true history over the age of strife.
They'd probably just assume the same here, particularly as they likely have no idea what earth looked like 40,000 years in the past and might not notice anything unusual. Every landmark known to us is unknown to them and vice versa, there's not going to be some "You manics, you put it all back together" moment when they find the statue of liberty in an unexploded state.
That's incorrect, they know how to build, maintain and repair most of their equipment, and they know how much of it works. The problem is they don't know how the truly advanced stuff works, and they don't fully grasp the thoeries behind much of of the rest, so it's hard to advance tech based on that.
Carrot of Truth
War is Peace
I think they would win simply because they would have no qualms with completely wiping out the populace and after a continent gets glassed whoever is left would capitulate.